


Alone With Others

by GillO



Category: BtVS - Fandom, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jossverse
Genre: F/M, POV Spike, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 13:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3292022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GillO/pseuds/GillO
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike in the basement, attempting to make some sense of what has been happening to him since returning to Sunnydale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone With Others

It was cosy down here, with a crowd of friendly creatures and beasties and things.

Rats weren’t so friendly. They talked at him a lot about Her. But they were food, so that was fine. Food didn't have to be friendly and good boys don't play with their food.

Ghosties weren’t always friendly. Some of them came and glared at him, pointing at ragged wounds on their necks, or where their throats used to be, or great open sores where he and Dru had fed repeatedly. Some came and played games with him, though, or with each other. The little girl from the coal bunker played hopscotch with the little boy Dru had played with in Prague. Three Cambridge undergraduates played leap-frog all around the room, their college scarves nicely concealing the gaping wounds he knew were there.

Others came on occasion and chatted. They were cruel and harsh, but he deserved that. They helped him not to forget what he was, what he had been, that he could never hope to pay, never hope to atone, never hope to be good enough for Her. It was a Good Thing. Didn’t want this new soul to get complacent or to start thinking he had a chance. Not like he was brooding, like certain poofs he could mention, but a man had to think and atone if he could, and a man who was a monster even more so.

She came once or twice. That hurt most of all. She’d tell him she had forgiven him, be soothing and gentle, then notice the spark and get angry. Or she’d be stern and tell him to buck his ideas up or snap out of it. No snapping. He’d done enough necks in his time. No more snapping now. When she was kindest it hurt most because it couldn’t be her really and it just reminded him of when she’d rewarded him for letting her pound on him, sometimes with a smile or a moment of kindness. Not true, never could be true that. Stupid memory.

Once he thought he saw the Nibblet playing games with her little chums, but it couldn’t be that because she wasn’t dead yet. Everyone died but she hadn’t, he was almost sure. Because he’d know. Tough Buff would have told him, he felt sure.

As well as rats there was a feral cat and some spiders. He played games with them also. Leapscotch, Hopfrog, Consequences, Two Thousand and Twenty Questions. There was Hunt the Slipper too, and Who’s Got the Button? Stuff from a Victorian childhood too far away to be real and tainted by the way it ended and the things she’d said. Not her, the other her. Nasty bits, those, but no more than was owing to him. In the end they weren’t much of a distraction from the core of the thing, though, the way they all came back to the same thing. 

He could run around in his head. He could lope around the basement, even if he did crash into things. He could cower behind old filing cabinets and kit cages. 

But he could never hide from himself. A bad, bad, bad rude man. Bad.


End file.
